This election is definitely a first in many ways, isn’t it? For the first time, we have two incredibly disliked candidates running to be the most powerful person in the world and an electorate who can’t defend one without attacking the other. The phrases “Crooked Hillary is worse!” and “We can’t risk a Trump presidency!” have been repeated over and over again and almost half of Americans say they are only supporting one candidate so the other one won’t win. That means that, for the first time, no matter who wins, it will be seen as a failure of the electorate and not the candidate. This election is also a first in that it’s the first election since I started following politics when I was 11 that is completely free of policy substance; it just feels like we’re watching two five-year-olds fighting over who gets the last slice of pizza. But, who’s really to blame for this?

Well, after months of craziness, I think I finally figured it out, and nowhere was it more obvious than in last week’s Commander-In-Chief Forum. This was the first time both nominees were in the same place at the same time to answer questions, this time from MSNBC’s Matt Lauer. To everyone’s surprise though, and I really hate to say this, both candidates did equally horribly. Hillary Clinton came across as a fearmongering hawk while Donald Trump came across as an idiot who knows nothing about the world. To be fair, Matt Lauer didn’t do them any favors; he asked them questions that refused to challenge them and never asked any follow-up questions. When he asked Trump if anything he heard in intelligence briefings alarmed him, Trump just responded with “Yes” and they moved on to the next question. This was the first time I actually wished Megyn Kelly of Fox News, the number one news network in the world if you’re really lenient with the word “news,” to show up, because she actually has a record of asking tough questions and holding Republican candidates’ feet to the fire.

The thing both candidates have in common is that the media in general absolutely loved them, Trump especially. They never took him seriously, and I don’t even blame them. I mean, it’s Donald Freaking Trump, the guy who was literally the inspiration for the villain in Back to the Future. He’s the guy who said Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists (but some are good people), who made fun of a disabled reporter, blamed a debate moderator’s tough questioning on “blood coming out of her wherever,” bragged about the size of his penis on national television, and encouraged his supporters to assassinate Hillary Clinton. He’s such a comedy goldmine that media outlets actually aired 20 minutes of his empty podium while Bernie Sanders was giving a speech. What they, as well as everyone, never expected was that a majority of Republican voters fell in line and he became the GOP nominee.

With Clinton, if you read one of my past articles, you know exactly how her nomination went down. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz tipped the scales on day one in order to hand the nomination to Hillary. Wasserman Schultz even manipulated the media by asking them to question challenger Bernie Sanders’ faith and told MSNBC to ask Mika Brzezinski of Morning Joe to take back her criticism of her in an email with the subject line “Chuck [Todd], this needs to stop.” Bernie was left so helpless that he had no choice but to suggest Hillary be nominated by acclamation at the Convention. For more details, you can go over to my article “Outberned.”

Now we’re stuck with two candidates who have historically low favorability numbers; the worst in American history. More than the RNC, DNC, or even the candidates themselves, the real culprit for the rise of Clinton and Trump are the media’s utter refusal to hold them accountable. Where were the questions on the Clinton Foundation, or on Trump’s immigration flip-flops last week? Where was the concern with actual policy substance and fact-checking during the primaries? Where’s the coverage of third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson? Chris Wallace, who will moderate the third presidential debate, openly said he won’t call the candidates out when they lie, just like Matt Lauer didn’t in last week’s Forum. The death of journalism is upon us, and we need to acknowledge that if we are ever to avoid another election of negatives.